


Armistice

by flying_pupitre



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13896855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flying_pupitre/pseuds/flying_pupitre
Summary: Perhaps the most foolish thing anyone could do was fall in love during war.





	Armistice

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of carries it from a little before the beginning of the series to right before everything falls apart with the leaking state secrets business. Not from London so the one mention of of geography might not be fully accurate. Lots of liberty with back story. Nothing terribly explicit (rating wise) but I'm still figuring out how this rating system works.

Adil arrives on an unseasonably warm morning in January, 1939. Toby is perched at the bar as usual, head bent over a book. Toby barely registers him until he is nearly at his elbow. He’d started and dropped his book, which Adil caught, neatly, precisely and set back on the bar. He had come from a hotel across town, where they “wouldn’t promote someone of his background to head barman.” He thought he’d try his luck at the Halcyon. Mr. Garland had an innate ability for recognizing competence and Toby dimly suspected had a soft spot for lost causes as well. After a battery of drink tests he hires Adil on the spot. 

“Uncanny. You really do know every person’s drink.”

Adil looks bashful but pleased. Mr. Garland seems to abruptly notice Toby as well. 

“Perhaps you can guess Mr. Hamilton’s.” 

Toby flushes as he feels those bright black eyes probe his face thoughtfully. He suddenly feels stripped naked, like Adil can see everything he’s ever done, ever seen. 

“Ah I- that won’t be necessary I have to be somewhere and-” and he’d all but stumbled out of the bar into the lobby. 

Like an idiot he’d realized he’d left his book at the bar. He’d slunk downstairs after an hour, half hoping Adil wouldn’t be there. But he was. He said nothing but smiled gently and pushed his book and a drink towards him. 

Toby wants so desperately for Adil to be wrong. 

Toby takes a sip. The barman isn’t. 

\--

It takes a month for Toby to actually speak to him. He tries not to lurk at the bar as often, and directs his requests towards Tom. Eventually one evening Tom has a night off, he’s been fighting with his father all day and it’s as good a time as any for a bourbon on the rocks. As he approaches the bar Adil takes one look at his face and pours him a double of the good bourbon. 

This time he can’t not say anything. 

“How do you do it?”

Adil watches him, with that same meditative expression he’d searched Toby with before. He chuckles a little. 

“It will sound so strange to you, but I’m not exactly sure.” 

The bar starts to get crowded and Adil is swept away, and Toby feels a surprising little prick of disappointment. He spends the rest of the evening trying to unwrap him, marveling at his easy charm. He thinks maybe it’s jealousy. Toby has never been good with people and realizes while Adil truly possesses some incredible gift for surmising drinks he also has a strange knack for knowing exactly what people need. He’s professional yes but doesn’t seem to mind when the odd aristocrat brings his or her trials and tribulations to him. As another month wears on Toby learns there is a drink for heartbreak, for disapproving fathers, promotions, for loss, for joy and everything in between. 

He starts sitting at the bar more often. Sometimes they chat a little, but mostly Adil is too busy to really say much. But it doesn’t matter. Months pass, and after a while he becomes a somewhat permanent fixture at the bar in the evenings. He knows its odd to read or study in such a bustling and boisterous place, but there is something calming about watching the way Adil makes cocktails, the elegant precision of his process. He studies Adil carefully, and sometimes when he’s lucky he’ll catch a glimpse of Adil glancing at him too, with a warm curiosity and maybe a hint of wistfulness. 

\--

Toby’s first kiss was Mildred Rayleigh in ninth standard. It wasn’t a kiss exactly, more of a quick press of lips in front of a jeering crowd during a game of spin the bottle. His second incidentally was during the same game, with Alistair Stafford, who had a little more experience and more to drink and framed Toby’s face with warm large hands, gently holding him in place. He’d smirked first as if to challenge him and that was enough for Toby to be uncharacteristically reckless as everyone else fell over themselves in laughter. The third was actually and maybe inexplicably Alistair again a few days later, this time behind the cricket pitch when Toby was on his way to the library. 

Toby had jerked back, pushing Alistair’s hands away. 

“I’m not- I don’t-” 

And Alistair had fallen back with an explosive apology and they never spoke of it again. There was a lot he couldn’t recall about that moment, mostly because he’d shoved the memory somewhere so deep that even Freddy wouldn’t see it. But he remembered the terror stamped across Alistair’s face, the shock, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. 

“Swear it!” Alistair, pleaded, nearly tearful. “Swear you won’t tell.” 

Later, when he was studying in the library, he’d thought of the party and the pressure of Alistair’s fingers on his face and soft shape of his lips against Toby’s. 

It occurred to him that something might be wrong with him, but it was something he thought he could keep at bay until his fourth kiss, which was Adil in between the narrow shelves of the liquor storage area. 

Adil’s lips were a little chapped and stubble somewhat rough but his mouth was pliant, warm against Toby’s. His lips were something neither Mildred’s nor Alistair’s were. They fit with a mathematical precision Toby couldn’t have predicted but appreciated. 

\--

Mildred was a dare and Alistair was a strange surprise. He’d never kissed anyone he’d thought about, someone who made his heart beat a little faster, his breath catch. Someone who he entertained imaginary conversations with during his walk to work. With large, pretty eyes that reflected gold in the sunlight and inky, depthless black under the cold fluorescent lighting of a bar. 

He’d pulled back abruptly and spent an inordinately long amount of time in his bathroom later, hands braced over the sink, wondering when exactly his reflection had become foreign to him. 

That was the thing about getting what you wanted. Once you had it in your hands you never had any idea what to do with it. 

\--

It didn’t last long though. The guilt or the shame. It didn’t stop him for reaching for the fifth or the sixth, Adil in his room, the only time he’d ever seen Adil looking slightly flustered, hair mussed, breaking his perpetual calm. 

He couldn’t be sure what this was, what it could be or mean. 

But after all this was war. You held your loved ones close and your enemies closer. 

\--

They kiss a lot after that. Adil never pushes for anything more, letting Toby move at the pace he wants. Slowly but surely, they start to cross all sorts of boundaries and bases, exploring each other’s bodies like eager cartographers. Once they start Toby’s whole world erupts and he wants everything. One night at the end of September, Adil is braced over him, his shirt carelessly undone, Toby’s on the floor somewhere he strokes Adil’s face and tells him he wants more and he’s ready for it. Adil looks surprised, and to Toby’s horror somewhat reluctant. He instantly feels so foolish and his blood floods out from his face. He tries to wriggle out from under Adil and that seems to snap him back and he clutches at him. 

“It’s not that I don’t want to, you have no idea how badly I’ve wanted this. It’s just it’s sort of the point of no return.”

“What, that I’m a bloody virgin and you don’t want the responsibility-”

“No, that I’m not the sort of man who can easily separate feelings from something physical.” He looks away, face a rehearsed calm. 

Ah. Adil always seemed so brave, the steadfast soldier. It had never occurred to him that he would ever have to be the courageous one. He reaches up and cups Adil’s face, turning it towards him. 

“Then don’t separate them. I want this. I want you. But only if you want it too.”

Adil’s eyes soften. He places his hand over Toby’s, holding it to his cheek. 

“I do.” 

Toby’s a little nervous but Adil is patient, careful. He kisses Toby a lot, whispers to him, coaxes his body open with a clear sense of practice that Toby can’t help but resent him for but only a little. They fall asleep afterwards, Adil holding him. Adil isn’t wrong; it is the point of no return. He wonders if he’ll cry or something, bemoan his loss of innocence. But it’s war. No one is innocent anymore and he does nothing except maybe bury a little closer to Adil. 

In the morning Adil is gone, and he would be lying to say it doesn’t ache, his disappearance, even though he knows that’s the way it must be. But he finds a little note on his pillow. 

“Tonight.” 

It’s enough. 

\--

October brings ugly sleet, German planes, and more stolen moments. Adil has long tapered fingers that stroke along Toby’s jaw, up the cut of his narrow ribs. They are both skin and bones, awkward angles and sharp points. Yet they fit together somehow, in Toby’s small bed, up against the dresser, and even once memorably in the storeroom liquor closet. He marvels at the shapes of their hands, clasped together in the dead of the night in a perfect geometry. The way Adil’s head tucked just under his chin when they slept, as if it had always been there. Adil was the puzzle piece Toby had longed for his whole life that he’d never dared to believe he could have.

Toby’s knows he’s not beautiful, not in the way Freddy is. Freddy has everything he lacks, height, charisma, conventional good looks and a rakish grin. His body had filled out while Toby’s remained gangly, uncontrollable, academic. Adil was also beautiful; this was no secret to anyone. He’d overheard comment after comment, ladies at the bar whispering about the things they would do to that gorgeous Indian barman. But he always has that sense of satisfaction, pride even that Adil had chosen him. No one in their right mind would ever call him beautiful but Adil does, over and over again. Sometimes Toby thinks he must be joking with him but when Adil kisses the moles above his hip bone, the soft skin on the inside of his thighs, he’s too far gone to care. He’s not beautiful, but they are. That’s what he realizes, one morning when the grey light before sunrise draws their light and dark shadows together. He learns that beauty isn’t something to be seen, but rather felt. And he feels it, night after night with Adil. 

\--

When the blackout shades are drawn Toby babbles a little, a nervous tic he’s always had. He’s a mathematician first but he’s also a dreamer and he’s always liked to spin little stories. 

“A house in the countryside. Or a cottage by the sea. We could raise rabbits and sell radishes, live off the land.”

He thinks Adil will tell him to stop, remind him beautiful forevers aren’t for people like them. Adil only smiles against his neck. 

“Radishes? Really. It’s hard to imagine your soft aristocratic hands cutting lettuce and planting corn.”

“Oh that’s rich, coming from a barman.”

“Head barman.”

Toby sighs. 

“I know this must sound so stupid to you.” 

Adil looks contemplative for a second, and he holds Toby’s eyes steadily without smiling. 

“I don’t like radishes, but I suppose I could learn to.” 

And they both laugh a little. It’s foolish to nurse these little pipe dreams but they do. In the dark anything is possible. 

\--

Their schedules seem to line up less frequently, especially with Toby working later and later in the office. Finally, it just makes sense to give Adil a key, let him steal in when he can. Some nights they just sleep, holding each other against the fierce unrelenting violence of the world. Other nights Adil slips in quietly, entangles his legs in between Toby’s, slides a hand into his dressing gown and murmurs “I want you,” against Toby’s temple. They’re weary but Toby’s body comes alive with Adil’s warmth pressed against his and he obliges, rolling over and gently pressing Adil into the mattress with the barest hint of pressure. He kisses Adil’s neck, licks along his collar bone, Adil’s dark obsidian eyes glittering with lust in the moonlight. Any day could be the last and he wants to etch into stone the feeling of Adil’s body under him, the way Adil breathes out his name when Toby fucks him. It’s hard waking up to an empty bed morning after morning because Adil has to be at work by the crack of dawn but it’s all they’ve got and they make do. 

\--

In November sleet falls nearly every day the raids are more frequent which means more time in the bomb shelter. He watches Adil across the room, so painfully far away. He aches to cross the divide, to draw Adil to him and whisper they would be fine. It’s different now, isn’t it, he admits to himself a little reluctantly. There was a time when his first thought was fear for the safety of Freddy or his mother, and in his little insular world that was enough. It’s all changed. Perhaps the most foolish thing anyone could do was fall in love during war. Why would you add another thing you could easily lose? But war makes you realize what you need, what really matters. It really was that simple. 

When the all clear siren rings out he lopes up the stairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator. Almost precisely fifteen minutes later the soft rap on the door tells him Adil is there and he yanks him into his room, bruising Adil’s lips with one hard kiss then another. The fear of death and the ecstasy of life makes them reckless. They are almost too rough with each other, Toby accidentally ripping Adil’s worn undershirt when he wrenches it off, Adil sucking a dark mark into the skin just below his collar bone that Toby would never permit under any other circumstance. Adil nearly fucks him too hard but Toby doesn’t care because they’re alive and he has another day to hold Adil’s shuddering body as he comes, to call him darling and stroke his hair, pulling him as close as he can. 

\--

Toby learns a few things about Adil. He has a younger brother and sister. He likes to read in his limited spare time, especially political theory. He’s very good at chess, maybe even better than Toby, and Toby wonders if he lets him win sometimes. He’s a quiet, thoughtful man but has a wicked sense of humor, and he’s not afraid to use it. He’s actually not much of drinker himself, except on special occasions because his father was a drunk and he doesn’t want to turn out like him. He speaks Hindi, though it’s gotten a little worse over the years as he’s seen his parents less and less frequently. 

He likes to be kissed on his neck, his chest. He has a sensitive spot behind his left ear, which Toby exploits over and over. 

He’s been with other men before, but no one has meant as much as Toby has. 

Toby holds onto these little facts, folding them like linens into a chest so that he can take them out later when he needs them. Days in the office are long, war drags on. He doesn’t have a thing to his name and has never loved material trinkets enough to bring him any real pleasure. So he has this. 

\--

One miraculous day they both have time off. Adil looks a little distracted and Toby wonders if he’s done something wrong. But Adil actually only wants to see if Toby wants to maybe make a day of it, especially with the spell of good weather they’ve been having. He asks with such uncharacteristic caution and timidity that Toby can’t help but say yes. He lies to his mother and tells her he has to work through the weekend. 

They decide to spend the day walking through Kensington Gardens. They first half of the day goes as planned. It’s sort of lovely to meet like this. Like they could have met at any bar in the city, not at the hotel his family owns. He loves Adil like this, in casual clothes, something he’s never been privy to before. He looks so handsome, sharp as always, and Toby wonders with a smile if he’s put in a little extra effort just for this. Toby did, as much as he could. He still thinks he looks frumpy, but he’d found one of Freddy’s older jackets fits him pretty well, fixed his hair, and he’d asked Emma to help fix his tie as he was leaving. She’d quirked an eyebrow but mercifully said nothing. Toby doesn’t think Adil will notice but his eyes rake over Toby once with deliberate exaggeration that brings faint color to Toby’s cheeks. Toby feels hyper aware of Adil walking beside him and they are careful not to touch each other. But it eventually subsides and gives them time to talk, to banter and flirt a little. At some point Toby realizes they do get questioning looks, but it’s because Adil is a foreigner. He flushes with shame. The world is terrible. Adil must notice but he says nothing. He smiles his little half smile at Toby. I know, but let’s enjoy this anyway. 

The afternoon brings an awful hailstorm. The hotel is too far away so Adil makes the quick sensible decision to bring them to his flat in Paddington. 

“Is it safe?” Discreet, Toby means.  
“This is a neighborhood of poor immigrants Toby. No one wants us here. We keep our heads down and try to get by. No one will say anything.” Adil says evenly, but gently. 

But when they reach the inside of his flat he looks a little sheepish, reticent, and Toby registers that he’s ashamed. 

“I know it’s not much-”  
“It’s perfect. I love it.” And he means it. 

Of course it’s tiny and maybe a little shabby but it oddly it looks like Adil. Immaculate, precise, but with little personal touches that convey an underlying warmth and sense of security. He recognizes the privilege of of being allowed into this sacred space. He doesn’t intend to mess this up. 

Toby takes Adil’s hand and winks at him. 

“It has a bed. What more do we need?” And pulls Adil down, laughing, on top of him. They are leisurely in way they’ve never felt the right to be before. It’s a day off and they have all the time in world to learn new things about each others bodies, to memorize each other. There is no raid that night, and Toby finally gets to wake up with Adil in his arms. 

In this room they are invincible. They slay dragons and save each other again and again, with murmurs of love and promises they were sure to break. In the quiet of the room, in the quiet of the war they are their own heroes and they are all they need. 

It gets a little easier, it helps having another space to call theirs, distributes the risk. No one notices when Toby straggles in late on Monday, when he’s gone for most of a Saturday. After all he’s a working man now, and who would know the difference between extra hours at the office or a quick connection on the tube to Paddington. 

\--

Sometimes he wonders if anyone guesses. Being the second heir was mostly miserable, but he is grateful for the lack of caring about his comings and goings on everyone else’s part. Nobody really concerns themselves what he does or honestly who he is with, at least not yet. Of course the fear of being found out is omniscient and ever present. In all honesty the noble thing to do would be to end things. That’s really the only way he can truly protect Adil. But he’s the second in line; nobility is not something expected of him. Freddy once quipped that he’d thought Toby might have had some secret girl on the side, which Toby had scoffed at. But except that one incident no one says anything. Freddy has bigger things on his mind. Staying alive, Emma. His mother seems like she is in her own little world as well. He’s seen the way she acts around Mr. D’Aberville, almost like a smitten school girl. There is something that unsettles him about it, but she looks happy for the first time in years and he who is he to judge, truly. 

Still. He often finds himself musing over how much time they have, really. A day? A few months? Maybe a year? How much time before a maid barged in unannounced, before someone decoded the way their fingers touched over a glass. Would there come a day when he wouldn’t hear the familiar rap on door at precisely 7:15 am as he’s getting ready for work? And even without all of that, could they whisper sweet nothings forever? He’s seen love start and fail, fester and erode. He saw his parent’s marriage blister and fracture, the way his mother, a laughing doting women became increasingly more severe and withdrawn into herself. Emma cried for a week after Freddie ended things with her, always when she thought no one noticed. But he saw the rings around her eyes, the pallor of her skin. And honestly Freddy didn’t seem much better for it.

Adil never seems to worry the same way he does, even though he has as much if not more to lose. He reassures Toby when he can, in the tranquil way he has. It was almost as if he believes in a separate peace, and Toby longs to believe in it too. But Toby is a realist and he knows how it is, how it could be. He’s been taught to calculate probabilities and even if he’s in love he’s no fool. 

But as the bombs continue to fall into December he can believe, if just for a second, when the smoke clears Adil will be waiting for him, watching him with the same half smile he always does. Let them have their war. They’d have their own armistice for tonight and whatever nights the world could give them. 

 

End


End file.
